Daniel: Hey, my name is Daniel and I go by the gaming/modding handle Pirate. I’m a 24 year old bartender currently based out of Vancouver Island.

T:How did you get started in game design?

D: I’ve been playing video games since I was big enough to hold a controller. I’ve always been a gamer and I see making games as an extension of that. I played around with making maps in Warcraft II and the original StarCraft as a kid but never made anything substantial.

When I first heard about the plans for the StarCraft II editor in 2009, I booted up the Warcraft III editor and made a short mission centered around being a Death Knight and collecting souls and upgrading your powers as you make your way towards the king’s castle. I’ve been using the StarCraft II editor since I got into the Wings of Liberty beta and my first real game was this turn based RPG called ‘Facility 17’. I learned a tremendous amount about the editor from the experience—and despite the game being horribly optimized and riddled with bugs—it was fairly well received.

T:What made you want to make games with the StarCraft II editor?

D: I spent way too much time playing Warcraft III custom games as a teenager and was excited to try out the StarCraft II editor. I love the StarCraft universe, and for me it’s pretty cool to be able to make games within that universe.

T:What was the inspiration for Rogue Star?

D: After my first turn-based RPG I wanted to make something that took better advantage of the StarCraft II engine that had stronger tactical elements. I took inspiration from various tactics games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Tactics, as well as more “traditional” RPG’s like the Sonny series of flash games. Originally I aimed for many rogue-like elements (permanent death, randomized items, and randomized dungeons—you can see a bit of this in the maze section of the game) but didn’t have time to add in many of these features for the contest.

T: How long did it take to complete Rogue Star? How many people worked on it and what roles did they have?

D: I put in about 100 hours between the summer of 2013 and the announcement of Arcade Cabinet contest—mostly working on the UI and the basic combat mechanics. After the announcement of the contest I kicked development into gear, spending an average of 50 hours a week until the end of May. It would’ve taken less time had I learned about StarCraft II layout files earlier—they really speed up UI development.

The Rogue Star team was just myself and David Orr (http://www.davidorr.net/) who composed the game’s battle music. I had my roommates playtest and spellcheck.

T:Do you have any funny stories about the design process?

D: When I first started playing around with force actors I had no idea what I was doing and turned them up a bit too high. There was an early version of the game where any killing blow would blast an enemy off the stage and into oblivion, even for basic melee attacks.

T:What was the most challenging part in the development process? How did you overcome it?

D: The pathing and movement system! It was the last piece of the basic combat system that I implemented and took way longer than I initially predicted. I had to completely re-write it after my first attempt which followed a basic pathfinding algorithm I found online. And then it took about a day to optimize and add pathfinding sub functions. Even now it’s not perfect and kind of clashes with the underlying Starcraft pathfinding. Fortunately I’ve found and developed a much cleaner movement system for the next chapter.

T:What do you feel makes your game compelling?

D: Rogue Star is novel. There’s nothing else like it on the Arcade in terms of gameplay. I aimed to create a nostalgia-inspiring experience with lots of gaming references in item and environment descriptions. Plus I like to think my writing style is amusing and the game doesn’t take itself too seriously.

T:Besides keeping things small and simple, what advice would you give to someone who is interested in using the StarCraft II editor to make their own game?

D: For me, the best way to learn is to jump right in. Start with a clear end goal in mind, and be prepared to learn a lot along the way. At this point, there are tutorials on nearly all aspects of the editor between the official Blizzard tutorials and community-made ones on sc2mapster.com and it can definitely be a lot to take in as a newcomer. Luckily, there’s a still a pretty active community online on the sc2mapster IRC at any given time that are happy to answer questions ranging from, “How do I make a fireball spell?” to “How can I sort a custom made leaderboard?” to “What is the slowest I can modify a unit’s move speed with behaviors before it cancels its queued orders/crashes the game?”.

T:How did you get people to notice your game once it was released?

D: Reddit! I was able to get some pretty good visibility between the small (but growing!) r/scArcade and r/Starcraft subreddits. From there both Kotaku and PCgamer wrote articles on Rogue Star which helped.

T:Do you have any plans for other games or future goals as a game designer?

D: At the moment I’m working on a smaller scale multiplayer hero-brawler under the working title “Resistor” with some RPG elements that has been a lot of fun to develop. Continuing the Rogue Star story is still up in the air at this point due to the tremendous work required (I’m unhappy with a lot of the game systems that were rushed for the contest) but would like to get back into it if I have the time.

T:What’s the best way people can follow you and your work (Twitter, Facebook, Website, etc.)?

D: At the moment roguestar.reddit.com is the best place to follow new developments.